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12-tone technique in John Williams?


filmmusic

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  • 4 years later...

12-tone rows in Knight bus (bars 3-8*) (although you don't hear 2 of them in that spot in the film. better use the ost track).

 

*they are repeated later in the track with the same rhythm on top

 

well, these sound like out of the blue just to create a musical chaos, rather than having a formal (or otherwise) meaning in the cue.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not a film score, but John Williams was one of the composers for Gloria Cheng's album. There were some atonal piano pieces there, although I don't know if they used the 12-tone technique.

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I have no expertise in this area but shouldn't one be very careful to distinguish 12-tone the specific compositional procedure, from instances in which chromaticism and very advanced harmonies arguably stemming from 12-tone technique are used but in an essentially tonal structure and environment?  I would argue that as long as the overall structure is tonal, what you're hearing in any given moment should be considered something other than 'atonal' per se.  'Atonal', from what I've picked up over the years, could easily be called 'anti-tonal', which makes it pretty easy distinguish it from something like for instance Goldsmith's score for Planet of the Apes, which although often called 'atonal' is actually tonal, albeit in a way that stretches the envelope considerably for a film score.

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